Teacher Education in CALL
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Chapter 6.
Theory and Practice in Teaching Project-Oriented CALL
Robert Debski, The University of Melbourne, Australia
Abstract
The
topic of introducing theory in CALL courses and achieving the right balance
between theory and practice is important, especially for courses at the masters
level, which in most disciplines focus on the synthesis of practice, theory, and
research. The present chapter proposes that project-oriented learning goes a
long way towards integrating theory and practice in the teaching of CALL in a
way that is the most useful to CALL understood as a design science. It analyses
an application of project learning in the Master of CALL program at The
University of Melbourne, and demonstrates that this pedagogy offers learning
opportunities unavailable in syllabus-driven courses, and has potential to
introduce rationalization of practice in the context of meaningful projects. The
chapter also argues that the emphasis on projects oriented to real-life
audiences contributes to strengthening CALL in the home university and to
building links with the language profession in and outside the university.
References available online
Mukahi, T. and Corbitt, G. 2004. “The
influence of familiarity among group members and extraversion on verbal
interaction in proximate GSS sessions”. Proceedings of the 37th
Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Available at
http://csdl2.computer.org/comp/proceedings/hicss/2004/2056/01/205610039a.pdf.
Updated September 12, 2006